Early Days of DIY

When I was a newly engaged young thing, there was a DIY project I just knew I had to do. To those on Pinterest or in the wedding blogosphere, this is likely very old news. Many other bees have done similar projects. In fact, Miss Camel had the same inspiration! Many of you have probably seen this and quite possibly will be yawning shortly. The good news is that most of my bridesmaids don’t fit into this category and I knew this would be very special to them.

One hundred percent of the credit goes to Bethany from Rinse Repeat. If you haven’t checked her out, do it! She has great style and had an awesome New Year’s Eve surprise wedding!

BE MY BRIDESMAID?

Since I live across the country from most of my family and friends, I wanted a creative way to ask the important women in my life to be in my wedding. I knew I could just pick up the phone and call, but I wanted the chance to ask them in a way where I could really express why I chose them and how much they mean to me.

Each bridesmaid was sent a box with the letter of her first name. I found unfinished wood boxes and letters at Michaels. Unfortunately, the Michaels closest to me only had three boxes shaped like this. My problem was once I found the box I wanted to use, no other box was going to work. So I spent the next couple days driving around to other Michaels collecting nine (yes nine, as in nine bridesmaids….more on that later) boxes. And yes, many coupons were used!

In the pic the “M” looks like I missed some spots, but I think it is just from the flash.

I then started the slow process of painting these bad boys. Looking back, I should have just started with a primer and saved myself many coats of paint. Each color probably took three coats. Honestly, the project was pretty labor intensive, but the repetitive painting gave me plenty of time to day dream about wedding dress, wedding shoes, honeymoon…

Sparkly belly band!

My idea was to have a Moroccan jewel box feel to it, but by the time I started crafting, I just picked colors that made me happy. As soon as the box was opened, it read:

Be my bridesmaid?

I wanted to find a creative way to write this, but ultimately I found a stamp set that worked great on top of the paint.

Inside the box I wrapped a sparkly belly band around a few notes explaining details about the wedding (date, location), their role as bridesmaids (feel fabulous in their dress, work the dance floor, etc.), dress information, and most importantly a little blurb about each woman, just expressing how much she means to me.

Underneath the notes, I had a few last surprises to get the ladies excited even though the wedding was over a year away. I included:

Overall the boxes were a huge hit! It was awesome to get the phone calls one by one as the girls checked their mail. Two of my best friends were on the phone with each other when both got home to their separate apartments and saw the packages. They opened them at the same time and basically started jumping up and down screaming (which they were still doing when they called me!). I was excited to have one cousin live close to me so I could deliver hers in person. I had heard from everyone but one cousin, who finally called about a week later. I was starting to stress that a stranger was enjoying her Ring Pop, but she confessed she only checks her mail once a week.

These boxes took a lot of time to put together, but they were SO worth it. What do you think? Better than a phone call? Did anyone else have a DIY project they felt like everyone was doing, but it didn’t matter because it was still special to them?

comments

You did such a great job on these!! I am hopeless when it comes to DIY so when I saw Bethany’s “be my bridesmaid” boxes months ago, I just knew I had to give that to my girls (it was also a novelty for them since they had never seen that before). Since I’m DIY inept, I found someone on Etsy to create them and they came out great! The girls absolutely loved them as well.

The paint-chips-and-dress-inspiration idea is brilliant. I love the idea of letting your bridesmaids pick their own dresses, but it can be really hard to put together a cohesive look. That takes a lot of the guesswork out of it.

I LOVE coral!!! and I have had a lot of confusion from people on what coral is as well. My original colors was baby pink and mint green but after I settled on a venue where the reception room is deep gold with crystal chandelier’s I decided that baby pink and green was to “baby shower-esqe” for such an elegant space. I immediately switched to navy blue but still wanted pick and after some google searches came across coral (I had seen coral but never considered it) and absolutely fell in love!!Navy is still my primary color (my bridesmaids dresses are navy) as are my table linens but all my flowers are coral roses 🙂 I can’t wait to see pictures of all the coral in your wedding!!